SUDBURY – New technology called Hydragen is helping reduce the emissions from diesel engines on school buses and is now making its way through the mining sector.

It's a device that can be attached to any vehicle and the benefit is a cleaner burn by converting distilled water into hydrogen and oxygen that's then fed into the engine's air intake.

According to the company that's perfected it, the benefit is two-fold. It's reducing emissions by about 50 per cent and saving millions in fuel costs.

"We have this all over the world in transport trucks, we've got it in larger mining equipment for open-pit mining… this is by far the first time it's gone underground and we're working with TES to accomplish that," said Jim Payne, dynaCERT President.

Total Equipment Services is the Sudbury company that will be working with Dynacert to roll it out across the mining sector.

"The approach that I like with dynaCERT is this is a solution for now that we can use that we can go into the mine and try to install one of these on every piece of underground diesel gear in the mines to reduce emissions," said Kevin Whynott, Total Equipment Services.

Feedback has so far been positive and there's already one northern Ontario company using a few units in a pilot project with it's gold and nickel operations.

dynaCert says the unit will pay for itself in fuel savings in about a year.

"Any existing piece of equipment, the mine doesn't have to go out and buy new gear or anything. We can actually walk in and install this on any of their existing gear running at this moment," said Whynott.

Payne added that "the initial rollout was for transport trucks… we are now on transport trucks, we are on large power generation, we are moving into shipping and rail but this is our first time going underground."

According to Payne, this device is also blazing a path forward in carbon credits, helping companies to record and monetize them for the first time while reducing emissions.

Total Equipment Services is hoping the units will soon become commonplace on all diesel machinery underground.